Part 2 - The Laundry Room

It's so much more than just a laundry room. It's the household command center, my office, craft (and occasionally crap) mecca, and a good hideout from Ian and Viv when I need a little alone time! The pictures are pretty self-explanatory, so I won't need to add much. This first pic showcases my beeee-youuuu-tiifulll LG washer and dryer. I can't believe that it has taken so long to come up with appliances in fun colors. Just add a little Cheer detergent and Bounce fabric softner and who wouldn't have fun doing the laundry???

To the left of the washer and dryer is the deep laundry sink. So far it's been used for soaking red dirt-stained socks, tie-dying tee shirts, and giving Lucie a much-needed bath!





And... on the same wall as the sink is the "welcome center" also known as where Viv and I dump all of our stuff as soon as we walk in the door. This is what it looks like when everything is picked up... It doesn't look this neat very often! The baskets up above hold mittens and hats and extra bags. The area below the bench is where I usually keep my laptop and steno machine cases, and it's also one of Lucie's favorite spots for taking a nap.

Don't you love the little green bookworm statues? Pop and Momma G got those for me for my birthday. They are very cute and a little corny... and awesome!



And last but not least, the desk. It's so much neater in this picture than in real life. This is where I'm sitting when I'm responding to your messages on Facebook at 6 in the morning. This is where it all gets done...


I'll be back on the blog tomorrow with more pictures of... something!

At Last... Living in the house... with furniture... and pets... part 1

Hello friends! Sorry for such a great delay. We never anticipated taking several months off from blogging to get moved in... but once we got in, I didn't want to take pictures until we had things like art on the walls, stuff in the cabinets, etc. We are still greatly lacking in the window-treatment department but since we live in the country, I figure anyone who gets an eyeful of one of us streaking through the house probably shouldn't be looking in our windows in the first place!

We would never make it as professional bloggers around here!

Finally I have began to amass enough pictures of different areas of our house in a semi-clean, photogenic state, that I'm finally ready to start posting them for the world. I know it makes the most sense to start with outside shots and work our way in, but in my usual, nonsensical way, we're starting with the kitchen and dining area.

Starting with the first picture... our dining area! It's just to the side of the kitchen, which is great because everyone in our family congregates in that area to begin with. The table seats eight pretty comfortably, and for Sunday dinner we drag in a few more folding tables and as many chairs as we can find. Sometimes we have 20 people for dinner on Sunday. Hopefully as the weather gets warmer, we can branch out onto one of the patios.

Next, the kitchen. This picture was pretty much taken from the head of the dining room table. I've got a long workspace with lots of countertop space to spread out on. My groovy stove is on the right. I am SO, SO, SO happy to have a gas stove after having to cook with electric heat for the last few years. Everything seems to taste better.

Ha! I just noticed the giant Sonic cup next to the stove. I think I have a Sonic issue.

Looking ahead in this pic, the groovy fridge is on the left, and tower-of-ovens is on the right. The fridge is the french-door style with the fridge part on the top, freezer drawer on the bottom. I love the fridge part. Everything we use is at about eye-level, it's wide, so you don't have to stack stuff super deep and then realize "oooh... I didn't know we already had 7 containers of sour cream or whatever."

The freezer drawer is pretty dinky. I've got waffles, popsicles and frozen fruit in there, and about everything else is in the garage freezer. So I would recommend this only if you have a spare fridge or deep freeze.

Here's a picture of our groovy ovens. The top one is the GE Advantium, which works as both a microwave and a second oven. It uses micowaves, convection and various other wicked cooking technologies so that it can heat up pizza or bake bread or roast a chicken... freaky, but cool. One of my favorite things about it is all of the pre-set recipes... such as these next two pictures... something we don't eat around here very often... and something that has come in handy on quite a few occasions!

The middle oven is a traditional trivection oven and is great for baking and burning things (my usual two outcomes!). The bottom drawer is the warming drawer... great for when you need to cook multiple things in the oven at different temperatures but want them all hot for serving at the same time...

This picture shows the island in the kitchen. Again, lots more counterspace, a groovy dishwasher, super deep sink, and my favorite appliance, the ice maker! I am an ice junkie, and it seems like an ice maker in the fridge can never make enough ice for our needs. Other than the little "plink" "plunk" "plunk" noises that it starts making in the middle of the night popping out little ice cubes we love our little ice maker... and the ice it makes is really cute, and thanks to it's squarish-shape and large amount of surface-area the ice cubes take a long time to melt. It is SO cool... sorry about that! :)



On the top side of the island, where all the fruit is, is the big bar area. We are still looking for barstools, but for now it's a great place to line dishes and things up when we have big dinners, and is a giant magnet for all the junk mail and papers Vivi brings home from school. After a few days it gets so tall you can't see the stove, so then we just bring in the trashcans and clear it out.

The last two pictures just show a view of the stove from the far side of the island. Our groovy Zephyr hood is super nice, but since the pipe goes waaayyyy up the wall, we are still in discussion as to how to cover that up. Our builder has told us that custom pieces of stainless steel need to be formed to wrap around it, to match the two or three segments of steel it came with. I keep thinking it would be really cool to find some other way to cover it up... corrugated metal? old barrels? milk barrels? it'll probably be 20 years before we ever do anything with it! Art trumps functionality around here.

The final shot is just one of the three little counter-spaces on the wall with the fridge and the ovens. One holds the scale, one is Ian's coffee and toaster center, and this one so far is Viv's art gallery and a holding place for whatever cookbooks I've borrowed from the library.

Next up... my laundry room??? Viv's room???? The outside of the house??? Come back tomorrow to find out!!!

Columns, Screen Porch and Paint

The house is very nearly finished now!
Here are some update shots of brickwork, woodwork and paintwork...



The driveway is all finished!

Our mailbox is happier now
The columns for the front porch got started
The wood part was built first and supports added and secured to the porch
Then stone boxes with brick tops were built up to the tops!

The columns finished:




We're about ready for some paint and shutters!

We need grass too

Vivi had an impromptu pizza lunchable picnic on the family room floor


Our mantle got installed - it's reused wood from a barn in Ohio.



We also got our screen porch framed in - awesome craftsmanship!

The fireplace is ventless (doesn't need a chimney), uses propane, and cranks out 39,000 BTUs!

The screen material should be installed next week.

Here are some shots from the outside:
The pieces hanging down are masking pieces of cardboard the painters use for masking while painting the fascia and soffits.

After finishing the front columns, the masons got to work on the fireplace surround (it only took them a couple of days to finish it):



Brickwork detail on top:


The shop got completely painted inside and out!
The green color is called Sheraton Sage and the tan is called Buckram Binding.




The house also got a little painted too, and the shutters installed.


We are only 1-2 weeks away now! We'll have a few more updates with pics soon.

State Fair Day

Ian took the day off work and everybody went to the Oklahoma Sate Fair!

Here are some pics of the Fun Fair Interlude:



The first thing Vivi did is go and practice farming and got a bumper crop right away:

Then we watched the Swifty Swine pig races:

Vivi got a pig keychain...

...that poops when you squeeze it

There were some fancy parade horses:

Then we went and watched wonderdog tricks

It was time for some Fair Food.
Funnel cake and Bud Light

giant corn dog (mostly eaten)

roasted corn on the cob drenched in butter

and ice cream (but it was bubblegum flavored...yech)

Trust me we could have picked less healthy fair food...

Time to ride the ferris wheel!

Lots of good views or people getting ripped off for small stuffed animals

cool

Let's see some exhibits!

Vivi and her Papa got wristbands to be able to ride any ride as many times as they wanted! Here's the King's Circus

We're at the top!

How about the "Crazy Mouse" rollercoaster!

Spinning like crazy

That was fun!

Vivi liked the log ride even though she was scared

They rode it a couple times!

We survived the whitewater!

We should do it again!

We are a little wet though...

Riding the gondola to check out things from the air...

Waving from the gondola

This was Viv's favorite ride...like a giant swing

She rode it about six times in a row

Wheee!

Then we all rode the sky needle! Lots of great views from there:
The midway

The OKC skyline from the space needle

Toyota had a hill course to play with in the FJ and trucks

Well, all of us didn't ride the space needle...Papa stood in line to get the best cinnamon rolls ever (red circle in the pic)

I had a great time at the fair!!